In her new collection of short stories Dr. Neluka Silva celebrates the lives of ordinary women living ordinary lives – and it makes for some extraordinary story telling. A young girl watches her parents’ marriage end in divorce, a young maid is forced to have an abortion, while a young urban wife struggles to survive an air raid in Colombo.
In one story a vengeful wife orchestrates an attack on her husband’s new lover, and in another a woman defies her parents to marry outside her religion. Single women, married women, women young and old, city dwellers, naive young misses from the village – they all find their way into ‘Our Neighbours and Other Stories’.
Neluka says she chose to write about what she knew most intimately. Wary of setting her stories in a rural landscape, she turned instead to the city. “Mostly the canvas is middle class urban Sri Lankan life,” she says explaining that the collection addresses issues of contemporary Sri Lanka.
“A character that appears often in my stories is that of the middle class urban woman,” she says explaining that she herself has always observed a tendency in society at large to buy into the confident, contented persona that many such women project. “People assume they have no problems...that obviously is such a myth – these women have so many difficulties and dilemmas that they have to face,” she says.
Illustrating her point is the story titled ‘Living a Lie’. In it, Neluka introduces three friends, one of whom is in a marriage that to external appearances is plodding along satisfactorily. But what Dil doesn’t know is that her husband is having an affair. Exploring the dynamics between the three friends, Neluka leaves the ending ambiguous. The same is true of a few other stories in the book, including ‘My Father’s Face’ in which a father who has all but disowned his daughter comes to visit his newborn grandchild in hospital.
“People asked me to add more detail, be more explicit, but I wanted to leave that note of ambiguity for the reader,” says Neluka, explaining that she wanted to provoke and engage her readers.
Drawing from second hand stories and from her own personal experience, Neluka created the 10 stories that make up the collection. Written over four years, this collection will mark the first time that Neluka has published stories under her own name – she originally submitted her first novel for the Gratiaen Prize under a pseudonym.
She titled it ‘The Choices We Make’ and was heartened when the novel was included in the 1998 short list. Currently the head of the Colombo University’s English Department, Neluka says it took her a while to drum up the courage to attempt writing fiction. “It was only after my PhD that I started writing, I actually considered it a challenge to myself.”
The collection draws its title from its first story. ‘Our Neighbours’ was included in the 20 stories that were listed in the Highly Commended Winners category in the 2008 Commonwealth Short Story Competition.
The plot introduces two families, one Sinhala and one Tamil who live side by side.
Feuding over the likes of cricket balls and parked cars, the two reach an unexpected truce as the ’83 riots consume the city. Both in the case of this story and in terms of the collection itself, the author confines herself to subjects she feel strongly about.
Though her writing is constantly informed by the surrounding social and political milieu, she strives not to lapse into polemics. “As a writer I feel very strongly that one has to document and work within the context you are living in...what I tried to do was to frame these personal situations within the backdrop of what was going on.”
Neluka approaches situations fraught with emotion through a simple, direct style. Her uncluttered language has evolved over years spent analysing writers as part of her academic career. “
I believe there is a kind of power in simplicity,” she says and though she admires writers who create evocative imagery and sophisticated literary allusions, she steers clear of those herself.
She’s confident enough now, that she’s certain of her own footing - “I just feel like when I have a story to tell I just want to tell it in the simplest way possible and I hope that the simplicity will carry something through.” |
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